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Aboleth
Resembling a bizarre, jawless, amphibious fish, the aboleth is the most ancient of all the intelligent races on Lyranthium. Appearance An adult aboleth is about 20 feet long and has three eyes arranged vertically on its head. Just behind where one might expect gills on a mundane fish one finds four prehensile tentacles. At the underside of the head is the aboleth's mouth, a wide orifice lined with rasping mouthparts that it uses to rend its food before swallowing it. Its tail possesses a single fluke along the dorsal ridge, extending into a simple fin that it uses to propel itself through the water. Aboleths are covered in rubbery, scaleless skin that secretes a thick mucus. History These grotesque, fishlike aberrations have been around since the world was in its infancy, their racial memories allowing each one to know everything that has happened in the world almost since its birth. Lands * Calabar Sea * Hinode Sea * Underlands Languages *Aquan *Undercommon Culture Aboleths see themselves as the world's lorekeepers. Unimaginably ancient, their memories cover every known age, dispassionately recording the rise and fall of countless civilizations. However, their alien nature makes them disquieting and dangerous to deal with, even if the supplicant has something the aboleth would find interesting. In most cases, aboleths see non-aboleths as potential slaves. The slime they secrete serves multiple purposes to this end: First, any contact with the slime changes the quality of one's skin, making the affected part dry out easily, and therefore requiring constant wetting to prevent pain and discomfort; second, inhaling the slime makes a surface creature able to breathe water (making it valuable as an ingredient for potions of water-breathing), at the cost of their ability to breathe air; third, the slime acts as a psychic vector for the aboleth's mental commands. It speaks no verbal language, but understands many languages, both active and extinct, allowing it to communicate with many other races. Aboleths are hermaphroditic. Every twenty years or so, an aboleth will decide to reproduce, independently of any instinctive mating drive. In aboleth cities, it may seek out a partner with whom to exchange genetic material, but in most cases it will fertilize its own eggs internally. Its young possess all the memories of their parent(s), and are able to care for themselves almost immediately upon hatching. Aboleths frequently live in the deepest portions of the oceans, either alone with their collections of treasures and curiosities, maintained with the assistance of a number of slaves, or in vast cities populated by similat scholar who are studied how the world has changed since the Age of Shadows. Each Aboleth will keep a number of servants with them, usually former surface-dwellers that have been transformed by the slime of their masters and kept under control by a psychic link. These servants will fight to the death to defend their master from attack, and if they are separated from their master by force they have been known to enter a state of catatonia. Category:Lyranthium Category:Lyranthium/Pages Needing Artwork Category:Creatures Category:Calabar Sea/Creatures Category:Hinode Sea/Creatures Category:Underlands/Creatures Category:Aberrations Category:Aquatic Category:Any Aquatic